Posted
by
samzenpus
on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @06:01PM
from the loving-the-robot dept.

MrSeb writes "Since Slashdot first covered lovotics back in July 2011, its creator — Hooman Samani — has been busy working on a couple of new applications for his fledgling scientific sphere of human-robot love: Kissenger and Mini-Surrogate. Kissenger is a robot with highly-sensitive and motor-actuated lips, which you can use to transmit a kiss to another Kissenger robot (held by a friend or loved one) over the internet. Mini-Surrogate is basically a real-world avatar that adds a physical element to video conferencing. Both are primarily for human-human use, but it's easy to imagine a Kissenger hooked up to an AI or video game. Likewise, the next Elder Scrolls game could come with a Mini-Surrogate, so that you can communicate with your in-game wife while you're knee-deep in fireballed orc."

Sir... this is Slashdot. I have experienced the coding prowess here. You want to trust people that have problems coding javascript to give you fellatio with a robotic device that takes commands remotely?

Well... okay... I might try it. But I sure as fuck won't be running IE when I do it.

Am I among some minority that is not just a little, but very thoroughly grossed out by this type of technology? I guess for me it triggers some sort of Uncanny Valley response, where my first instinct is not to empathize with a human-seeming robot, but to run away screaming.

Seriously, humans will hump damn near anything if you make it squishy enough... filthy beasts.

Who needs filthy beasts when you have tentacle monsters?

That brings up the serious question that for better or worse we expanded the human experience in the printing era, more or less, with the invention of the tentacle meme. Are there any new internet era memes that have expanded the human experience in a similar way? And no this isn't a very thiny veiled request for a goatse link, I'm looking for something a little more general in concept, not one individual incident. Maybe the general concept of Camgirls? Or the concept of an infinite array of digitally d

I'm curious as to why you credit the printing era with the "tentacle meme". Sure, tako to ama [wikipedia.org] was a woodcut, but AFAIK there's no reason to suspect it was a new idea in Japan, and in European folklore (which I'm more, though still scantly, familiar with) bestiality definitely predates printing -- octopuses were not (so far as I know) included, probably because the octopus was not familiar to most of Europe.

/serious

Are there any new internet era memes that have expanded the human experience in a similar way? And no this isn't a very thiny veiled request for a goatse link,

No it's not. When you say "internet era memes that have expanded" anything, you stripped away

Feeding the trolls here, but really? Affection? Humping a squishy piece of silicon is not affection, it's a release of sexual energy and nothing more. If it brings some people a small measure of, um, satisfaction, then so be it. But I would personally rather be forever lonely than curl up with a pair rubber lips wired to my laptop.

Besides, I didn't say it should be outlawed or anything. I just said I was extremely weirded out by the whole idea. Tell me you don't feel the same when you see that dude ma

Having experienced the Internet since it started, and we all know that ChatRoulette is really PenisRoulette, I am pretty confident that it will all be dudes kissing each other while some dudes are pretending to be chicks. For whatever reason.

Approach it from the other direction....

Women. What woman, one that you would want to kiss, is going to settle for some robotic lips when they have the absolute power to go out and get a man anytime they want too?

"Kissenger is a robot with highly-sensitive and motor-actuated lips, which you can use to transmit a kiss to another Kissenger."

Did anyone else get the image of making out with a robot with the appearance of Henry Kissinger? Or am I the crazy one here...

You're not crazy, you're just showing your age. Most of the people developing social media technology these days have no idea what Henry Kissinger looks or sounds like, and they totally don't get the Monty Python tune...

I don't think you mean that half of Slashdot is made up of gay men, because in that case it would still be 100%. It's just that they would also want the dildo on the other side they could suck.

You must mean that half of Slashdot is made up of women, and none of them would want this. I disagree. They would all want it, and it would be the Christmas/Birthday/Anniversary present to their significant others.

A classic movie. The hokey pokey scene is where it starts to get really weird. OK maybe it was pretty weird before then. That movie might make a good sliding scale test to see how far along in the movie you can watch before getting completely weirded out, figure out your tolerance level.

Should it be Heavy Metal's "Earth women who experience sexual ecstasy with mechanical assistance always tend to feel guilty"? Or Frank Zappa's "A latent appliance fetishist is a person who refuses to admit to his-or-herself that sexual gratification can only be achieved through the use of machines"? Ooh! I just can't choose!

Uh... I actually met the dude once in an airport and shook his hand, just because it was interesting to meet him. I didn't do anything rude like blow up about the Vietnam War or anything, and he was nice enough and all.

I just can't see why anyone would want to lock lips with him. Sorry. It seems very unappealing.